Leading Structured Groups.

Leading Structured Groups is an APT-Accredited 3-day course from one of the UK's leading providers of mental health training courses. We bring the training to your own organisation, for maximum cost-effectiveness, and up to 15 people can attend. (2-day version and refresher courses are also available.)

Executive Summary:

Most people in the helping professions will find themselves considering running, or actually running therapeutic groups from time to time. And yet, leading groups involves very different skills from those used in one-to-one work.

The course is designed for all those who are considering running or actually running structured groups. Managers are welcome, but should be aware that the course is aimed at practitioners with direct client contact. It is a multidisciplinary course, lasting three days.

Course structure:

Introductions, an overview of group work and the nature of the group work the delegates are involved in, the layout of the course, and exercise 1a which requires delegates to present what they know about Groupwork … in small groups.

Delegates work in pairs or trios (depending on how they'll be running their groups in real life) to prepare a group they will run at some stage during the 3-day course.

First pair/trio runs their group. The appropriate number of delegates act as group-members and the remainder of the delegates act as objective observers. The observers will give the account of what went on, later.

Observers give their feedback, confining themselves predominantly to things that went right. Similarly both group members and group leaders feedback their perceptions.

Stages 3 and 4 are repeated, to enable all delegates to experience each of the three different roles (group leader, group member, observer).

The tutor delivers coaching and feedback and a certain amount of prepared didactic input (lectures, 'tips' and 'secrets') in parallel with the (guided) feedback from Observers. This is supported by the course workbook.

The final afternoon is spent on the triathlon (an inter-group competition consisting of Presentation, Quiz and Future Plans) followed by registration and feedback. By this stage delegates are relaxed about the idea of 'games for a good purpose'.

What this course will give you:

You will have the experience of preparing and running a group in a setting where you receive constructive feedback from both colleagues and the course tutor.

You will experience what it is like to be a delegate on a course run by your colleagues. As much as any amount of practise, this role-reversal can be the biggest 'eye-opener' for delegates.

You will have the chance of being part of a team of dispassionate observers while colleagues run a group. Dispassionate but insightful, in that you will be required to report back 'what works'.

You will have access to the insights and didactic input of the tutor, an experienced group leader.

You will be part of what is usually a high-energy, high morale event, where delegates pose and solve problems for themselves and each other, and make plans about applying what is covered to their future.

What you receive as a result of attending the training:

You will be registered as having attended the course, thereby gaining APT's Level 1 accreditation, and receive a certificate to this effect. The accreditation gives you access to online resources associated with the course.

Your registration lasts indefinitely, and your accreditation lasts for 3 years and is renewable by sitting an online refresher which also upgrades your accreditation to APT Level 2 if you are successful in the associated online exam.

Your accreditation is given value by the fact of over 100,000 people having attended APT training. See APT accreditation for full details.

How can I access this training?

Option 1: Bring the course to your organisation:

We bring this course to your own organisation a train a group of 6-15 people for a fixed, all-inclusive fee of £4,165 plus VAT for the 3-day course, or £3,050 plus VAT for the 2-day version.

If you or a colleague are a senior professional (e.g. consultant psychologist) and have a talent for communication and teaching, then you are welcome to apply to become an APT-accredited tutor. You could then tutor the course - or your chosen modules from it - in your own organisation, under license.

This is not only a highly appropriate use of senior professionals, but it also saves your organisation the tutor-component of the fee (around 50%) each time you run it or your chosen modules.

To see the full benefits of this and to see whether you are eligible, click the button:

Downloadable information sheet:

Share this course with your colleagues:

As a bona fide APT event, this course automatically has accreditation from The Association for Psychological Therapies. This means (i) that it contains the right amount of relevant information for its duration, and (ii) the information is presented in an engaging way, and in a way that will make it likely to be used after the course. APT verifies the accreditation by publishing the delegates' average ratings of relevance and presentation-quality for all its accredited courses. The accreditation is given value by over 100,000 professionals having attended APT courses.

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Feedback Ratings.

We continuously monitor the quality of our training by obtaining feedback on the two key scales of relevance and presentation from every course delegate. Below are the average ratings for the last ten runnings of this course.

Average Presentation rating: 97%

Average Relevance rating: 95%

*These statistics were last updated in April 2017.

Written Feedback.

APT prides itself on the feedback we receive about our courses. Below are just some of the great comments the Leading Structured Groups course has received.

"This course is a valuable asset to anyone who is lucky enough to get on it (gold in your pocket)."

"Without a doubt the best training course I have ever attended ... Thoroughly enjoyable, relevant and helpful for my job role!"